The New York Post has headlined this “UDDERLY ICKY“.
“GOSSIP Girl” star Kelly Rutherford might not be uncomfortable talking about breast-feeding, but the rest of us are uncomfortable hearing about it. The 40-year-old pregnant mother told Us Weekly she still nurses her walking, talking 2- year-old son, Hermés. “It’s an amazing bond with your child,” she said, even pointing out that the experience mostly benefits her body – not her kid: “I was thinner after my pregnancy than before, and I think a lot of it was the nursing.”
Note that the World Health Organisation recommends breastfeeding children for at least two years, and that a biological age of human weaning, based on data from other primates, probably falls somewhere between the age of 2.5 and 7.
The good news is that the first few comments on the NYP article are actually positive! This makes a change, after the Salma Hayek kerfuffle.
Things are not so positive elsewhere.
Here’s what one of D-Listed‘s authors had to say:
Okay, if you want to breastfeed your kid until he graduates high school, fine. It’s your titty milk, it’s your kid, have at it! But don’t think that bitches want to hear about that shit. Especially, when your son can talk about it.
And Yeeeah.com:
File this one under “Ewwww”: Gossip Girl star Kelly Rutherford is still breast-feeding her two-year old son. [...]
Um, okay. Another amazing bond with your child? The umbilical cord. But there’s a reason you sever those kinds of bonds. Nobody wants to play with the kid who breaks out his mom’s tits during snack time, just like nobody wants to play with the kid dragging around a smelly old placenta on a dried-up string.
Celebrity Baby Scoop’s commenters went straight into AntiBreastfeeding Bingo:
Haha. If the kid can ask for it, he is too old to breast feed.
yeah i think i would pump after a certain age
I think its weird and gross.
OMG Yahoo brought the yahoo commenters out for the occasion:
she shoudl breast feed him until he is a teen so then he can start sucking on his gf’s tits! lol ewww roflmao
THAT’S HOW YOU END UP WITH SAGGY TITS & SISSY KIDS!!
I think that it is sick to breastfeed a two year old! That is not healthy for the child. He is two and old enough to drink whole milk from a sippie cup. You would think it would hurt also! Let the boy grow up some! He is going to look back at this when he is older and be so ashame!
I agree there is nothing wrong w? breastfeeding however not to a 2 year old child. This isn’t normal. If she was pumping her breast & giving it to him okay fine but for him to be still sucking on her breast is disgusting.
Awful…just awful…who exactly is getting gratification from that?
What the heck is wrong with her? It’s getting to the point where he’ll remeber this! It’s gross! Breastfeed the same as you would formula feed- you STOP after 12 months!
just sickening where is cps when you need them.
Anyone who is tempted to think that we’re in a pro-breastfeeding, feminist culture now? Bookmark this post.
You know, I’m pretty sure that I can remember my mum breastfeeding me when I was two years old. Not very often, as I recall, since my younger sister had come along by then, and she took up most of the boobie time, but I’m always astounded when people think it’s wierd for two year olds to breastfeed.
Anyone who is not sheeple is weird. And all good sheeple’s have major hang-ups.
I always find it funny when people say “if they can ask for it, they’re too old for it!”
My son’s 3rd word was “boob”… he was 9 months old and he’s still going at 20 months, although his speech is a little clearer now ;o)
The hatred goes further -
Udder – A baglike organ containing the mammary glands, characteristic of certain female mammals, such as cows, sheep, and goats.
These cretinous tools, unable to view breasts in anything other than a sexual context, say much more about themselves than anyone else
O Beppie, did it turn you into a Prevert?
*head explodes* (Why is everything I read today making me want to break things)? :D
My son breastfed until he was about three and a half (actually longer, if you take into account the very occasional foraging he did over the course of the year or so it took for my milk to dry up completely). Um, pretty sure he’s not ashamed of that fact (he’s ten now, and is quite happy to have been breastfed, and I think he does have some vague memories of doing it). He has grown his hair long, though, so maybe he is a sissy. I dunno. ;) He seems pretty normal to me, though. :D
The fact that someone mentioned CPS in one of those comments is mindblowingly wrong. *sigh* Ah well, at least several people did make supportive comments at the original article.
A deviated prevert, thinking of a mutiny of preverts?
I was at a barbecue the other day with a bunch of children all between the ages of two and three. Of the half dozen or so there was only one who was entirely weaned—so yea, that’s my datapoint about the habits of the parents of inner-western Sydney.
A two year old breastfeeding isn’t wierd. That hungry two-year old, with one eye around his mother’s breast, staring at me sitting next to the both of them, peacefully drinking my beer, is a bit offputting.
Eat your lunch, damn you!
I should make it clear that the parents of the children—that is, my friends—were also present at the barbecue, lest I be suspected of preversions of my own.
That’s some rarefied circles you move in – fewer than 1% of children in Australia are breastfed to age 2, let alone beyond. (Source.)
Wean ‘em when they’re ready to straight to beer, eh?
Breastfeeding to two years of age (and beyond) is not uncommon in many traditional societies. In particular among Indigenous societies, many of which enjoy higher rates of breastfeeding, and for longer duration than non-Indigenous societies. However today it seems people see ‘breasts’ (especially with physically attractive women) and equate them solely with ‘sex’, which is why I’m sure some of those articles express “udderly icky”-ness with two year old infants still breastfeeding.
Surely in 2008 a woman’s infant feeding preferences are her own business?! Grrrr!!!
They also miss the fact that ‘still breastfeeding’ doesn’t mean that’s all the nourishment the kids are getting. It’s perfectly normal to phase out breastmilk while transferring the kid onto solids or in tandem with cows milk in a cup. There are valid ‘emotional comfort’ issues to breastfeeding beyond those of straight nutrition. Wonder if you’d get the “sissy kids” comment had Rutherford’s child been a girl? There really does seem to be a cultural problem with the isolation of women’s breasts for male sexual gratification directly behind this ‘ick’ factor.
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@Liam – If you don’t get the President of the United States on that phone, you’ll have to answer to the Coca-Cola company.
And I swear to God it’s articles and comments like the ones quoted that just make me more determined to have kids and breastfeed them as long as I darn well like.
Surreal the way that feeding kids milk taken from another species is the normal thing to do, compared to breastfeeding. Kids weaned and put onto other milk sources are breastfeeding from another species, surely the ‘icky, unnatural’ brigade would find that a larger problem than regular breastfeeding.
I fed my daughter until she was 2 and a half and was fortunate to not have anyone comment. I admit that I dodged the issue by not feeding in front of anyone that I guessed would have a problem.
My word. Beer makes bonnie babies, as my granddad used to postrationalise.
Related note: apparently Facebook is pulling a Livejournal and banning pictures of breastfeeding babies put onto the site.
@ Purrdence
WTF? I’m going to have to find some pics of me and my son to post there, in protest. (Like the LJ icon I created back when THAT was going on). GRRRRRRRRRR.
Purrdence, you’re kidding?
(No, of course you’re not.) WTF? What the hell is wrong with people?
I found out about it when I got sent an invite to a protest group on facebook.